For instance, the antique Samoan swords may have sparked off a fire that cause $150,000 in damages in Illinois.
Tag: 09.21.12
Your Kid’s Brain, On Apps
“What’s unknown, but fascinating, is how media and especially touch screens, might shape — or warp — children’s attention span, language development, and dawning understanding of concepts.”
Scottish Culture Funding Escapes Big Cuts
“Creative Scotland will receive a core budget of £34.1 million, a 2% reduction on the current year. Budgets for the five national performing companies directly funded by the government have been reduced by 1.26% to £23.6 million.”
Big Increase In Sales Of Music Featured In Olympics
“According to industry figures, the events boosted downloads and sales by a retail value of £2.2m. There were nearly 250,000 extra album sales after the two showcases for British music, and just under 500,000 additional music track downloads.”
EU Approved EMI/Universal Mega-Merger
“The European Commission has approved the takeover of UK music firm EMI by Universal Music, but it must sell some of the firm’s most valuable labels.”
In Praise Of An Old-Fashioned Editor
“He was old school in the sense that he knew everyone — presidents and dissidents, giants like Vaclav Havel, Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez and Walter Cronkite — and never dropped their names. He was old school in that he would edit out a chapter of a manuscript — as he once did to me — and you would thank him, ultimately.”
Ponytail Physics, Brain Waves In Dead Salmon: The 2012 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
Among the laureates were researchers studying why coffee closhes in a cup while you’re walking (the fluid dynamics prize), doctors who showed that MRI machines can find brain activity even in dead fish (the neuroscience prize), a Russian company that can convert old ammunition into diamonds (the peace prize), and, for the acoustics prize, the inventors of a jamming device that can stop blowhards from bloviating. (No, they don’t mean Miss Sweetie-Poo.)